Erius

The pink-orange touch of the sunset lit the yellow hills of the hinterlands with a magic fire. Wind tussled between the tall grasses, cutting through them with howls as sharp as swords. Naked oaks, war-torn from their feud with autumn's call, wilted and waited as the twilight came, bringing a fierce chill with it.

Erius watched it all, leaning against the battlements of the outer city wall. She had watched when the Countess' men came, streaming their banners of green and orange and black and gold. She had watched when the sun was still high in the aquamarine sky, when the knights of Anvil strode along the kindling hills, weaving between the naked trees, their armor more white-fire than silver-steel. She had watched as the people of Kvatch scrambled out of their houses to gape at the procession as the host passed through the gates, the clip-clap of horse hooves melding in with the curious murmurs from the crowd. She had watched. And she had waited.

She knew they were coming. Father told her so. Father even had the decency to pay a visit to the ransacked shack at the edge of town, telling them all to be on their best behavior. And then father had left, not looking at each of their faces more than once. It was the first time he visited in months.

"Your father is a busy man," Old Luke said a couple of nights ago after he visited. "With him being the Count and all."

"He's not my father," Erius remembered saying, seething with anger. She never felt as empty and angry as she had when people talked about her father, and how great of a man he was.

"You've got his blood in your veins, girl," Old Luke laughed, clapping himself on the knee and taking a good swig of the mead he had on the table. "Whether you like it or not."

"I've got half his blood in my veins," she had corrected him. "Thank the Divines."

The old foster frowned, setting the bottle of mead back down onto the table. It landed with a clunk. "Complain as much as you'd like, you still have it better than most bastards out in this world. If your father were any other Count…"

"I don't care if he were any other Count," she said. "He's still a horrible father."

The old man looked hesitant, now that he saw that he did some damage. "Alright, Erius, what would make him a better father?"

"Visiting at least once a month would be a start." She stopped to think. "And legitimizing Emery, Erra, and Esther so they can live in a proper home. This," she gestured all around her - to the eroding walls, the faulty staircase, the desolate floorboards - and scowled, "is not ideal for them. Emery wants to be a knight, and he'll be coming of age in a couple of months. By legitimizing him, father could make all of his dreams come true."

"Well-"

"And Erra," Erius continued hotly. "She's been sick with fevers for months now. I bet if she were legitimized she'd have been tended to by the best doctors in all the province."

"Eri-"

"And Esther is not even seven. All the other kids in the streets pick on him because he's smaller than most of them. They don't care who his father is. Do you know why? Because he's a bastard."

She remembered what had happened then. Old Luke drew a long sigh, scooted his chair closer to her, and raised the candle so that the features of his face were clear for her. "It's not that simple, Erius."

"Why not?"

"Because," he moved the candle and flickered light shed over his old face. He had a balding head, with a very skinny neck with patches of brown spots that grew hair on them. His white sideburns, still tinged with a hint of ginger, loped down over his jaw, and reached up as far as his balding head. His lips quivered, as it did commonly when he tried to think carefully before he spoke. "His reputation and respect as a Count - as a man of his word - would completely diminish if people found out he had been fostering bastards."

"It was his decision to bed whores. Not ours."

Old Luke's top lip quivered. "Yes," he considered, "that it was. But he is making the best out of the situation as he can."

At that she had left, tears brimming in her eyes. He didn't understand. None of them did. The only three people who understood anything she had pleaded had been her siblings, and they were far younger than most of the people she knew.

So she did as their father asked the past few days. They behaved. They stayed indoors. They tried to act proper, except for Erra who was too weak to get out of bed, and Esther who had the attention span of a lackwit.

The only one of them that was allowed to leave was Erius, and that was only because she needed to get money so she could save up to buy a better house for all of them. In the recent months, she had to spend that money for medicines and herbs for Erra.

She had asked her older brothers for money a while back, both of which conscripted to the Kvatch fighter's guild under permission of Ornad Wulf-eye, the head of the chapter in the city. Both had refused her, but made promising arguments for her conscription to the guild as well. She was better with a bow than both of them, and the way she handled a dagger, they swore she'd be one of the best assassins ever to be known.

So she had been working with them, taking extra contracts for the money, trying not to botch them for the bonus gold. This had been her main source of work for two years now.

She slowly ascended the ranks: Associate, then to Apprentice, then Journeyman, then Swordsman, and finally, a couple of weeks back, she had been dubbed Kvatch Fighter's Guild Protector.

"The highest rank any woman has achieved in this city," Ornad had told her after pressing a small token of iron into her palm. She remembered how it felt: cool and comfortable, with her fingers being able to wrap just fully around it. An arm, wielding a short-sword in its hand, was carved into the token. A streaming banner was carved underneath it, with the cursive letters Protector sewn across its blank slate. "Sooner or later, you keep this up, you'll be surpassing your brothers."

She had been working three times as much as them that she had been practically living at the guild instead of back at home. Every few nights she would return, only to drop off extra clothes, medicine, and food. But other than that, she was working nonstop.

"Erius?"

The voice grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her out of her reverie. The familiar wind touched her hair, blowing it askew as she revisited the old sight of the hinterlands below. The sun had dipped beyond the horizon, past the dead hills and even further, across the docks and shipyards of the city of Anvil several miles away and past the seas that bordered the edge of the world.

The boy who climbed the steps to the city wall held a certain gravity when he approached her. She could never put a single finger on it, but she always felt comforted by his voice, the way it caressed the air with a beautiful tenor. His eyes were tender too. It felt like they barely grazed against hers when he looked at her.

"I'm here, Dralus," she called to him in the dark.

The boy named Dralus flashed a toothy grin as he collapsed on the top step, giving her only moments to catch him before he fell. "I'm done… finally." He looked up at her, smiling innocently. "Thank you for waiting."

"Of course," she said. "How much did Ornad pay you?"

"Fifty drakes." He pulled out his coin purse. "But I couldn't have done the contract without your training… so here." He slipped his hand inside the purse and pulled it out with a handful of gold.

"Oh, Dralus," she said hesitantly, taking a half-step backward. "I can't."

"You can, actually," he said. "There is no law of magic that physically keeps you from being able to take this from me."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "What I mean is that I shouldn't accept this-"

"You will," he gave a toothy flash of his grin again. "Because I wouldn't have gotten nearly half of this without your help."

"Dralus-"

"Oh come off it," he said, shoving the gold into her hand. "Go buy a new dagger or something with it. Or clothes, or whatever else you want." He ran a hand through his wavy mane of hair. "You deserve it far more than I do… even waited for me… which I wouldn't be able to do in a lifetime - you know how I am with not doing anything."

"The waiting wasn't so bad," she said. "I was pretty distracted with the parade going on today."

Dralus walked over to the battlements, pressed his back flat against it, and dropped himself to a sit. Pocketing his coin purse, he pulled an apple out from inside one of the flaps of his leather jerkin. "Parade?" The bite into the apple sounded satisfying.

"The Countess' men, from Anvil," she said, plopping down next to him. "They made their way into the city today."

"Hmm," he mused. "I don't think it would be a parade if it were a host of men coming in…"

She nudged him, hard. "Oh, you know what I mean." Dralus was the type of person who took many things almost too literally.

He seemed to ignore the nudge as he took another bite out of his apple. "So, how big?"

"What?"

"How big was her host?"

"Oh," Erius said, thinking. "I'd say at least three thousand."

Dralus' face lit up like a torch. "That many? No wonder the whole city was bubbling for hours. Does the Castle even have that much room?"

Erius shook her head. "It could house half that many, possibly," she guessed. "But definitely not enough for everyone."

"You would know, wouldn't you?" he teased. Tossing the core of his apple over his shoulder, he jumped back on his two feet and held a hand for her. "C'mon."

"You're ready already? You seem pretty exhausted still."

"Yup, and I don't really see myself becoming un-exhausted, so we might as well start earlier than later. You know, before I fall asleep on you."

"Are the others coming?" She asked. She missed a lot of her friends in the guild. She had not seen them in at least a couple of days.

"Artenious and Do-ja-ri are, but I think Krevan wants to sleep early tonight. Ornad's got him doing a pretty lengthy contract come first light tomorrow morning."

She smiled. Four out of the five of them were gonna be there tonight. That was better odds than most nights.

They descended the stairs from the city wall and waltzed through the back alleys of the city. Only one moon was out tonight, poised just above the top apse of the Chapel of Akatosh, as if the tip of the church were a spearhead thrust into its bosom.

Erius knew the way pretty easily. They had taken this back route at least a thousand times now, so it was backhand knowledge for her and probably all of her friends at this point.

They turned the corner between two manors, scampering uphill until the light of the street-torch nipped orange at their wear, and then they hung a quick left. Travelling quickly down the cobblestone road, they passed the statue of Antus Pinder, and behind him the small bridge that led to the Castle. From that road, the end was clear.

Erius remembered the times Old Luke would take her and her older brothers to the arena when she was a kid. She would always make small bets with her brothers as to who would win the next fight. Smiling to herself, she remembered how she had won almost every bet. For what it was worth to her, she had a great judge of character.

She also remembered how Old Luke told her the stories of the Imperial City and their attempted conquests over the city of Kvatch. It was told that the Emperors of Cyrodiil and the Kings of Old Colovia were the greatest of foes, where they battled for control of western Cyrodiil for centuries to come. Kvatch had been the only other city in the province that had an arena outside of the Imperial City. She hadn't been to the Imperial city ever, but she had a hard time believing the arena here was beaten out, especially in terms of aesthetics.

When they arrived at the arena, Do-ja-ri and Artenious were already there, creeping along the shadows between two wealthy-looking manors. It took a good minute to be able to pick them out from the dark, but when they did, Dralus called out: "Just because you have the night on your side doesn't mean we can't see you."

The shadows shifted. Then, with hair like halo-fire, Artenious stumbled out from underneath the drape of shadow. Do-ja-ri followed not too far behind, falling over him.

"Klutz," Dralus said as Erius laughed. "How long had you been waiting until you came up with that brilliant idea?"

Artenious frowned, pushed the Khajiit from under him, and scrambled to his feet. His face posed very pensively, where his nose crinkled up short of where it usually was, and his pink lips pursed forward. "My father always said-"

"We get it," Dralus chuckled, cutting him off. "Your father was a wise man, and you aim to follow in his footsteps, yeah?"

"Oh shut up," he sighed exasperatedly. "You don't know the kind of contract we had to go through today."

"You don't know what kind of contract I had to go through today." Dralus crossed his arms, pressing his chest forward as if it were a challenge. Erius rolled her eyes.

They exchanged stories. Artenious talked about how he and Do-ja-ri had to deal with a near-deaf woman's stash of sweetrolls. Turned out that they had gotten arrested because she thought they were trying to rob her. Artenious also made a note about how Do-ja-ri kept making really bad Argonian jokes while they were locked away, where there had been at least four or five other Argonians in the prison there with them. Do-ja-ri scowled behind him the whole time he was telling it.

The Dralus came forward, talking about how he had to fight off a pack of wolves that killed a nearby farmer so he could get the corpse back to his family. The talk quickly shifted to Erius and how she had watched an entire army march into the city all the way from Anvil.

"Why do you think they are here?" Do-ja-ri asked, his voice slow and a little disjunct. It had a touch of foreign accent in it. "It is not like them to travel such a way."

Dralus shrugged. "Beats me. Though I have heard rumors…"

Erius' stomach tightened as she heard Dralus talk about how many people thought the Count of Kvatch, her father, had secret affairs with the Countess of Anvil. "Some say they're lovers, and because of Countess Umbranox's husband vanishing, out of her forlorn grief she found herself in the arms of Count Goldwine."

It was a disturbing thought. She wanted to think better of her father, but she did not think she had the resolve to. Of all the things he's already put us through…

"I don't think it's that," Artenious said. "I heard from a peddler not the other day that Anvil is starting to get all antsy."

Dralus nodded silently. "You're talking about the Emperor's sons?" he asked.

"Yeah. That must be why she's here. Or something like that. She wouldn't have taken her whole army with her if she wanted to just see Count Goldwine, right?"

"Perhaps it is a trick," Do-ja-ri suggested. "She wants people to think it is a political move, but actually, she has come for the Count."

Dralus noticed Erius' discomfort and walked forward to touch her arm. "I think I hear them starting," he said, nodding over inside the arena. "Let's go."

They followed him into the dark crevice of the arena threshold, where he took a lockpick and wrung the lock free within ten seconds. "I heard there's a good bet going on tonight," he said conversationally.

"Between who?" Erius asked, pushing a curl from her eyes.

"Jantilus Sovern and your brother."

With a little guidance from Do-ja-ri in the utter dark, they managed to make it up the stairs and into the stands. Moonlight paved a circle for them to see as the combatants lined up against each other.

Erius noticed her brother from far away. Emmen was the oldest of all her siblings, eight-teen, brawny, muscular, and very bearded. He had fought in the arena a couple of times and had remained undefeated. The fans took to calling him "The Red Wolf," partly due to how savagely he fought, and partly because of all the red hair that was on his body. She remembered why he had fought in the arenas at times. It was because he wanted to disrespect father. He only came when father attended, and when he won, he would always spit in his direction.

This was different though. Nobody was here to watch, except for some members of the fighter's guild. There was no nobility. No crowd. No father.

Ornad Wulf-eye looked grumpy in his wolf-skin armor. A huge battleaxe was slung across his back, and pelts of all colors choked his collar. The gray color of his hair shone brightly against the light of the moon. "Combatants, do you both swear to the Divines that, upon your life you give, you will finish this fight between the two of you?"

The two combatants nodded. Erius did not know much about Jantilus, other than he was a big brutish orc with no sense of thought whatsoever. He towered over her brother like a lion did a sheep.

"That," Ornad continued grimly, "the winner would claim victory only upon the death of the defeated?"

They both nodded again. "Alright," he said, clearing away the rest of the fighters that lingered in the ring. They filed up into the stands on the opposite side, an eager silence accompanying them. "On my go. Are you both ready?"

The third nod between both of them seemed to do the trick.

"What's going on?" Artenious blurted out, though not loud enough for the rest to hear. "Isn't that your brother, Erius?"

"Are you blind? Of course it's her brother. Look at his armor… looks just like Ornad's. We all know the Wulf-eye has been training him to become the next master of the guild someday."

Erius' head swirled as a sickly coldness gripped her stomach. She also knew that her brother was being conditioned to become the next leader. So why was he gambling his life away now?

Dralus motioned for them. "C'mon, let's get closer to see what's going on. I can barely see them from up here."

They followed him down to the first ring of benches, fenced behind a long iron wall that looked nine feet tall. Erius could see her brother now, clearer than day. He looked angry. Not the kind of unbridled anger a man would get when he lost something valuable of his. But a channeled anger… the anger that one would see in a wizard, calculated and focused. There was not a touch of barbarism to his visage, now that she saw, which threw her off. Emmen was the most barbaric man she had ever met.

"Fight!" Ornad sprinted back and leaped over the wall as other members helped pull him over. Emmen and the orc danced to the center of the ring, and the fight had begun.

Jantilus had two war axes held in each hand, melded of dwemer metals. They were stained red from the dried blood of his last kill. With no shirt, Erius could see easily the muscles that chiseled his olive-green body. It looked like an armor of itself. He charged at Emmen, axes drawn high above his shoulders, and gave out a loud war cry.

Emmen simply parried the swings and kicked at the orc almost lazily. The orc spun on his heels, violently throwing his arms forward, the red-gold metal of his axes biting into the air in a full arc. Again nothing. Emmen was backpedaling now. He hadn't even drawn his weapon yet.

The fight prolonged as Emmen still had yet to draw his sword. Erius heard shouts from over the coliseum walls, but she paid it no mind. There had been many crazy commoners that filled the streets in Kvatch.

The orc had started to grow irritated now. And fatigued. His chest heaved much faster and heavier than before. It was then, after he lunged forward sloppily, that Emmen drew his sword and, with a strike quicker than light, carved a deep gash of red into the leg of the brute.

Jantilus cried out as he staggered back, letting Emmen progress forward swiftly. In one graceful leap he slammed the pommel of his blade into the orc's chest, and everyone heard the crack of a rib. Or two.

It was then that Erius knew that Emmen was playing with the poor warrior. He must have pissed him off to another level, she thought, because Emmen wants him to suffer. Her brother's anger was a frightening thing.

The one shout extended to several outside of the walls, loud enough for most of the audience to turn their heads. Suddenly, the gate to the grounds was opened, and guards, donned in the silver Kvatch mail and the white-wolf tunic, piled in, lances at the ready.

Immediately the fight stopped, and orc and imperial stood back-to-back, weapons bared towards the encircling legion of guardsmen.

Out from the gate strode in one man Erius had been very familiar with. Savlian Matius of the City guard looked smaller than what she remembered as a kid. But his eyes still looked threatening, the way they darted around wolfishly. He looks more like a wolf than any of us do, she mused, stepping back. Dralus almost had to keep her from falling backwards over the seat.

"Emmen, son of Ormellius," Savlian said, almost disinterestedly. Emmen eased himself a bit, and the guardsman walked over to him, unrolling a piece of parchment and showing it to him. "You have been summoned by our Count Kvatch, Ormellius Goldwine, on the crimes you have decided to commit against your fellow brethren and city citizens of Kvatch. Upon his royal decree, I arrest you on behalf of unnecessary violence and convention with gambling. What do you have to say for your defense?" Savlian's voice was loud and clear, like a royal page or jester. It cut through the cold bite of the air, resonating like a snarl.

Emmen had said something unintelligible, and suddenly Savlian waved his arm. Guards poured in around him, tackling him to the ground. It took at least four or five before they were able to finally force him down successfully. "I know a lot of these faces," Savlian called out, looking around. "I had thought the head of the fighter's guild was better than this, sneaking into the Count's grounds past curfew and casting matches as if you owned the place. You are hereby put under probation by the crown.

"As for the rest of you," he said, and immediately Erius, suddenly numbed by the event unfolding, was pulled down by Dralus who had mouthed to her: we need to get out now! "I will find you, and when I do, you will all be fined."

Erius was tugged by both Artenious and Dralus, who had skidded off towards the lower exit on the far side of the arena.

The loud, articulate curses of her brother echoed across the arena as he was dragged away, loud as any wolf's howl.